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Amiri Baraka

Amiri Baraka studied philosophy and religious studies at Rutgers University, Columbia University and Howard University without obtaining a degree. In 1954 he joined the US Air Force reaching the rank of sergeant. After an anonymous letter to his commanding officer accusing him of being a communist led to the discovery of Soviet writings, Baraka was put on gardening duty and given a dishonorable discharge for violation of his oath of duty. The same year he moved to Greenwich Village working initially in a warehouse for music records. From this period stems his interest in jazz. At the same time he came into contact with the incipient movement of Beat Poets that was going to have a powerful influence on his early poetry. In 1958, Jones founded Totem Press, which published such Beat icons as Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg. The same year he married Hettie Cohen and with her became joint editor of the Yugen literary magazine (until 1963).

In 1960 he went to Cuba, a visit that initiated his transformation into a politically active artist. In 1961 Preface to a Twenty Volume Suicide Note was published, followed in 1963 by Blues People: Negro Music in White America - to this day one of the most influential volumes of jazz criticism, especially in regard to the then beginning Free Jazz movement. His play Dutchman premiered in 1964 and the same year he won an Obie Award for it. After the killing of Malcolm X he broke with the Beat Poets, left his wife and their two children and moved to Harlem because, at the time, he thought of himself as a black cultural nationalist.

INTERVIEW CLIPS

On his trip to Cuba in 1959-1960 and hearing Fidel Castro.

On a personal meeting with Fidel Castro.

On his friendship with James Baldwin.

On meeting eith Robert Williams in Cuba.

On talking with Malcolm and other civil rights groups about forming a "united front".

Herman Ferguson

Herman Ferguson was a prominent member of Malcolm X's Muslim Mosque Inc. and later his Organization of Afro-American Unity (OAAU). Malcolm X created both organizations in 1964, after leaving the Nation of Islam. Ferguson met Malcolm after he and other African-Americans in Queens set up the Rochdale Movement, which sought to stop the construction of a new housing development in Queens.

In 1959, New York City was set to erect Rochdale Village on the site of the Old Jamaica racetrack in Queens, but word soon got out that Blacks would not be hired to build the site and would be excluded from living in any of the developments' soon-to-be available 5,280 apartments. The Rochdale Movement couldn't halt the construction of the development, but it went on to become a major voice on issues of economic and community development for Blacks in Queens.

The Rochdale Movement caught the attention of Nation of Islam members working in Queens. So when Ferguson attended one of Malcolm X's services at his Mosque No. 7 in Harlem and then asked if Malcolm would be interested in coming to speak at a rally in St. Albans, Queens, the minister welcomed the invitation." (Source: "Exile is Death" by Karen Juanita Carrillo. Colorlines Magazine, Fall 2005)

INTERVIEW CLIPS

Malcolm's "chickens coming home to roost" comment regarding JFK's assassination.

Undercover agents in the Organization of Afro-American Unity.

The inner workings of the Organization of Afro-American Unity.

Malcolm X's return from Cairo and how he was received abroad.

Malcolm's style of outreach to other groups.

The forming of a new organization that was to be affiliated with Malacolm X.

Why Malcolm X formed the Organization of Afro-American Unity.

Malcolm's dissatisfaction with the Nation of Islam.

Organization of Afro-American Unity security concerns

The role of Norman 3X Johnson and Thomas 15X Johnson in the assassination of Malcolm X.

Ferguson's theory on who was behind the assassination.

Max Stanford

The Revolutionary Action Movement (RAM) was the only secular political organization that Malcolm X joined before his fateful trip to Mecca in 1964. Early in 1963, Malcolm took the young Philadelphia militant Max Stanford under his wing. During the last few years of Malcolm's life, few persons were as closely associated with him as was the young Max Stanford. Stanford was a student militant who had influenced both the National Student Youth movement and the Students for a Democratic Society in the early 1960s with a vision of radical black nationalism. Stanford fused the thought of Robert F. Williams on armed self defense with the philosophy of Malcolm X on black self-determination. To these tenets, Stanford added a sophisticated Marxian revolutionary philosophy, which he derived from a close personal association with the legendary Queen Mother Audley Moore. Malcolm put his blessings on Stanford's Revolutionary Action Movement by becoming an officer of the organization. Among the most important of Stanford's contributions were his assistance to Amiri Baraka and the Newark, New Jersey, movement, his support for members of the Black Liberation Army under Assata Shakur, and his encouragement of the League of Revolutionary Black Workers in Detroit. He was influential in efforts to encourage Robert F. Williams to assume a nationally prominent leadership role upon Williams return from exile in China. Stanford helped found the African Liberation Support Committee and promoted the concept of "reparations" to descendants of American slavery. And he remained an important voice of criticism of Black Panther strategies of the 1970s. He established the African Peoples Party in the early 1970s in an effort to keep the flame of revolutionary nationalism alive. While underground he embraced Islam and since the early 1970s, he has been known as Muhammad Ahmad. Since the 1970s, he has been one of the leading historians and theoreticians of revolutionary black nationalism. (Source: "The Papers of Robert F. Williams," Lexis/Nexis)

INTERVIEW CLIPS

Malcolm X and the March on Washington.

Malcolm's transition after the raid on the LA mosque.

Max Stanford discusses the March on Washington.

The March on Washington co-opted.

Secret agency within the army.

On Malcolm X leaving the Nation of Islam.

On the Organization of Afro-American Unity as a public front.

Malcolm X's participation in the OAAU's meetings.

Malcolm's attitude toward the college-educated.

The communications between Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr.

A conversation overheard between Malcom X about Martin Luther King Jr.

Malcolm X felt that Elijah Muhammad was being used as a front by the "ultra-right-wing".

The Nation of Islam was set up as a deterrent that would attract Black men who had been politicized in prison.

Media Source:

Malcolm X Project at Columbia University

The Undiscovered Malcolm X: Stunning New Info on the Assassination, His Plans to Unite the Civil Rights and Black Nationalist Movements & the 3 ‘Missing’ Chapters from His Autobiography

February 21, 2005

Link to Google Document Version

http://docs.google.com/Doc?id=ddg3bzkt_130fkgk3kft